Debates of Nov. 20th, 2024

Refusal of Witness to Respond to Questions from Standing Committee on Public Safety and National Security

[The Deputy Speaker, Chris d'Entremont]

I thank the hon. member for that input. I am sure the Speaker will be coming back soon with a decision.

The House resumed consideration of the motion, of the amendment and of the amendment to the amendment.

Reference to Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs

[Don Davies, NDP, Vancouver Kingsway, BC]

Mr. Speaker, it is always a privilege and an honour to rise and speak on behalf of the great people of Vancouver Kingsway and to bring their voices, opinions and concerns to the floor of the seat of their national government.

Having had the privilege of representing these great constituents for a number of years now, I have a very good sense of what their expectations are of members of the House. I know that, regardless of their political hue, whether they are Conservatives, Liberals, New Democrats, Greens or some other partisan supporter, they expect the people they send to the House to act with honesty and integrity. They expect them to address their minds to the pressing issues of the day, the issues and policies that affect 40 million Canadians from coast to coast, who struggle each day to put food on the table, to put a roof over their heads, to support their families, to pursue their education, to pursue their dreams and to realize their potential.

Members may have noticed that New Democrats have not gotten up to give speeches very often on this matter. That is because, frankly, most of what I just said about what the people of Vancouver Kingsway expect has been violated in the House for the last six weeks. For the people watching and for my constituents, I will give a brief summary of what has been going on for the last six weeks to explain why we are here and what brought us to this moment in time.

We are debating issues that go right to the heart of a lack of integrity, a lack of honesty in government and a refusal of many members of the House to put their minds, skills and efforts to addressing the real issues affecting people. We are here because we have a sordid story of corruption, scandal and misspending, which is not surprising if one looks at the history of the Liberal Party and its governing of this country. It is horrible misspending, inexcusable misspending, of taxpayer dollars.

In this case, it concerns the Sustainable Development Technology Canada fund, which was established in 2001 and was afforded a little over $1 billion in 2021 over a five-year period. Through an Auditor General report and spot audit of this fund, alarming facts came to the fore. Dozens of cases of conflicts of interest were identified, 90 in fact, totalling about 80 million taxpayer dollars. A question was raised about whether the people who were making decisions to allocate those funds, all appointed by the Liberal government, were giving them to companies that they themselves controlled or that they were connected with in some way, which is obviously a blatant conflict of interest, or at least an apparent conflict of interest.

About $60 million was given to 10 projects that were not even eligible when the Auditor General took a closer look. Frequently, the projects that were approved and received millions of dollars of taxpayer funds overstated the environmental benefits that came to pass. In fact, over the past six years, SDTC has approved over 225 projects worth about $836 million, and although the Auditor General only did a spot audit on a sampling of them, she found consistent, pervasive and repeated conflicts of interest, misspending and wasteful spending. The Auditor General put the blame squarely on the Liberal minister responsible for this fund and said there was a lack of oversight. Imagine that. This was a fund of almost a billion dollars, and there was a lack of oversight by the Liberal minister who was supposed to make sure that funds were spent in accordance with the authorization of Parliament. That did not happen.

The Ethics Commissioner is now investigating the former chair of the SDTC fund, Annette Verschuren. She approved two grants greater than $200,000 to a private firm that she directed. She did not recuse herself. She actually participated in the decision of SDTC to approve those grants. I do not think we have to be a lawyer or particularly informed on ethics issues to know that we should not sit in judgment in a case where there is money that could go to our personal benefit if we are actually charged with protecting the public interest. That case is being investigated as we speak.

In this case, the NDP joins with all parliamentarians, particularly on the opposition side, who are horrified. Frankly, we condemn this kind of wasteful spending and absolutely scandalous corruption. The official opposition has put forth a motion demanding documents from the government so that we could get to the bottom of it, as is Parliament's right. The New Democrats also joined with the official opposition and, I believe, the Bloc Québécois when we supported that request and demanded production of documents to the House so that Parliament can exercise its constitutional and historical duty to scrutinize spending of the government and to hold government accountable.

The Liberals demurred. They did not want to do that. It resulted in a motion calling for the Speaker to find a violation of privilege in that refusal to produce those documents. The Speaker agreed with the request to have those documents produced here. Parliament is supreme. Parliament does have the right to have those documents produced. I think that transparency, accountability and respect for our constitutional obligations support the New Democrats and the opposition members in that quest.

This is where it gets a little bit funny. The government is prepared to produce documents to the House, but they want to redact them to some degree. This is a consistent and common theme of government, where they want to redact for certain reasons. Some are more legitimate than others, in my view. Sometimes it is to protect commercial information. Sometimes it is for national security. Sometimes it is to save their political bacon. I am not sure which is the case in this until we see the documents.

The official opposition, though, is not happy with that. They want all the documents, unredacted, to go directly to the RCMP. That is where it gets a little bit confusing, because the government has refused to do that, saying that while Parliament has the right to have documents produced to it, it is unprecedented to demand production of documents to a third party. There is also an issue of whether the police forces, in this case the RCMP, might have their investigation compromised by having documents produced to them in that way.

In any event, we have had a standstill for six weeks. Instead of working productively, I would say, like responsible parliamentarians, to resolve this issue and conform with the Speaker's direction to send those documents to PROC, which is a committee of Parliament, to work these out, the Conservative opposition has decided instead to bring the work of the House of Commons to a grinding halt for six weeks. For six weeks, the Conservatives have not allowed a single piece of the people's business to move forward in the House.

A former colleague of mine, Nathan Cullen, used to famously say that the currency of Parliament is time. We only have a certain amount of time to address the issues that are important to Canadians. Every hour counts, yet the Conservatives have decided it is more important to them to have not a single issue move forward in the House for six weeks, not on housing, not on inflation, not on international trade, not on foreign affairs, not on issues that affect every single Canadian in every community in this country. Not a single issue important to Canadians has been allowed to move forward while they filibuster and debate a motion in the House that could easily be ended.

In terms of cost, I am told that the filibuster the Conservatives are engaging in costs us $70,000 an hour. That is about a million dollars per day. By my calculation, that means the Conservatives have cost the House about $20 million over the last six weeks. In my view, that pales in comparison to the cost to Canadians of refusing and failing to deal with the real issues that they are facing, that my constituents are facing in particular.

I want to delve into a couple of those issues we could and should be dealing with. Some information came out recently, in the last week, showing that the price of groceries and the price of rent have gone up 20% and 21% respectively over the last three years. From September 2021 to September 2024, food has gone up 20% and rent has gone up 21%.

Figures came out the day before yesterday that showed, when comparing October of last year to October of this year, so just in the last 12 months, the price of rent has gone up 7.3% for Canadians; the cost of shelter, which includes mortgage interest and all other forms of paying for accommodation, has gone up 4.8%;and the price of food has gone up 2.7%. For three consecutive months, food inflation has exceeded the headline target of 2%. Remember, that is on top of the stratospheric increase of the cost of all these things that has already happened in the last three years.

People are struggling. People are cutting back on their grocery bills. It is not just working families, but middle-class families are cutting back on their food. Parents are skipping meals so they have enough money to make sure their children can eat.

In my hometown of Vancouver, it is not uncommon for people to have to spend between $2,000 and $2,500 per month to rent a one-bedroom apartment. Two-bedroom apartments cost between $3,800 and $4,500 per month. These rents are absurd. People are being driven out of the communities they grew up in, businesses cannot find workers to staff their enterprises and people are having to move out of the cities they want to live in.

I have heard a lot in this place about Conservatives blaming the Liberals and their inattention to housing, and that is well placed. The Liberals have been in power for 10 years, and I can say it is absolutely the case that housing affordability has become worse in the last 10 years. I do not think there is a community in this country that would come forward and say housing affordability has become better in the last 10 years.

However, it also wrong just to blame it on the Liberals. This is a problem, at least where I live in the Lower Mainland of British Columbia, that started well before this. The housing crisis did not start in 2015, so I pulled some statistics to see if my intuition was correct and will share what I found. I checked the Greater Vancouver Realtors, which has been watching statistics for many decades. It tracks the prices of varying forms of housing, in this case a single detached house, and it does that for the entire Lower Mainland, from Squamish in the north to White Rock in the south, where millions of people live. What it found is that the average price of a single detached house in the year 2000 was $380,000. In 2004, it was $600,000. In 2008, when the Harper government came to power, it was $800,000. In 2012, it was $1.2 million. In 2016, just when the Harper Conservatives left office, it was $1.6 million. In 2020, it was $2 million, and in 2024, it is $2.25 million.

What does that mean? When the Harper Conservatives were in power between 2006 and 2015, the price of a house in Vancouver went from $800,000 to $1.6 million. It doubled. The greatest increase in housing cost that happened in the last 25 years occurred under the Harper government, under the Conservatives' watch. When they come here and say that the housing crisis is all the Liberals' fault, it is the Liberals' fault from 2015 on, but it did not start there.

That is the kind of issue the people of my riding have sent me here to deal with. They want to know how we can make sure that everybody has a secure, affordable and decent place to live. There are thousands of issues in politics, and they are all important, but some are foundational. Housing is one of them. Housing is not a luxury. It is a necessity. It anchors people in community. It makes it possible for people to access all of the civil rights and duties that they want, like to find a place to work, to send their children to school, to connect with neighbours and to build community. They all require a stable, secure, affordable home, and that is an illusion for far too many Canadians.

People under the age of 30 in this country should be furious, because people under the age of 30 in this country cannot find a place to rent that is affordable, and the dream of home ownership is almost completely gone. That is a failure of policy that should be laid at the foot of every single federal government, of both Conservative and Liberal hue, going back several decades.

I just want to talk for a moment quickly about scandals. The funny thing is we are talking about Liberal scandals. It is a genuine Liberal scandal, but I was here when the Harper government actually self-destructed on its own after many scandals. I have heard Conservatives say they were not here at the time. The leader of the Conservative Party was here. He was in cabinet the whole time the scandals were happening.

The Conservatives say that was then and this is now. The best predictor of how the Conservatives will govern next time is how they governed last time. What happened then? They blew $2 billion with the Phoenix pay scandal. They did not even ask anybody about it. They just decided to contract out and privatize human resources in the public service. It bungled. It did not work and they are still trying to clean up the mess today. It was $2 billion wasted. That happened twice.

There were two times the Conservative government was found in contempt of Parliament. It was the first government in the history of Canada to be found in contempt. In the greatest irony of all, it was for refusing to produce documents. The Conservative government refused to produce documents in the Afghan detainee scandal and documents that underpinned their so-called tough-on-crime legislation. When this Parliament demanded, by majority vote, when Parliament was supreme, for the Harper government to produce documents, it refused.

We have Conservative after Conservative getting up, spouting respect for principle, demanding that Parliament is supreme and demanding the production documents. The Conservatives did not do it when they were last in government; they will not do it when they are in government again.

There was a $400-million G8 scandal. We all remember the $80,000 gazebo by former Minister Tony Clement, who, by the way, had to resign because of a sexting scandal after he was extorted because of that.

There were Conservative logos on government cheques when they were handing out taxpayer dollars in a cheap attempt to blur partisanship.

There were four Conservative senators suspended. The Mike Duffy affair happened, where the legal counsel to the former Prime Minister wrote a cheque for $90,000 to pay the legal expenses of Senator Mike Duffy. I do not know who pays $90,000 in legal expenses for people they barely know, but they did.

Two Conservatives had to resign for election cheating. There was Peter Penashue and Dean Del Mastro, who was taken away in handcuffs and jailed for cheating in elections. There was the robocall scandal and the in-and-out scandal. They lost $3.1 billion of $12.9 billion in funds allocated to public safety and anti-terrorism initiatives. It took the Treasury Board six months to try to track the money down.

That is the record of the Conservatives who are standing up here today, attempting to be the moral and ethical leaders of this country. I say to Canadians, if they want to look and see how the Conservatives will be next time, take a look at how they acted last time. They will find a record of corruption, dishonesty, lack of ethics and poor governance.

If Canadians really want to elect a party that would actually do the work of the people of this country, then they would vote a New Democratic government in for the first time in history. We would spend our time working on the real issues facing Canadians every day, not this kind of back-and-forth corruption that we see from the two old-time parties in this place.

[Wayne Long, Liberal, Saint John—Rothesay, NB]

Mr. Speaker, I have to say that I really do not disagree with a lot of the member's speech. We all come here week in and week out. The member said we have been here now for six weeks, basically wasting our time and the time of the Canadians watching, just continuing on with the debacle. What puzzles me is that the member of the NDP and his party are supporting what is going on, and they could very easily end it and stop the affront to democracy.

My question for the member is this: Why are he and his party letting the charade continue? I certainly expect that from the Conservative Party opposite but not from the New Democratic Party. Why is the member supporting the Conservatives on this?

[Don Davies, NDP, Vancouver Kingsway, BC]

Mr. Speaker, the answer is simple: Both parties are wrong in this case. The Liberals should be producing the documents you have ordered and should not be redacting them. The New Democrats agree with our colleagues in the Conservative and Bloc parties when they say the government has to be forthright and produce the documents that will probably implicate it and be embarrassing for it. The documents will probably show that there has been terrible misspending.

The Liberals are wrong to withhold the documents from the House. They should be sitting down and negotiating an acceptable option. Frankly, that is on the government. The Liberals are the government. They are in control of the Order Paper and of proceedings. It is up to them to end the problem; it is not up to the fourth party in Parliament.

[Marty Morantz, Conservative, Charleswood—St. James—Assiniboia—Headingley, MB]

Mr. Speaker, I was listening carefully to my colleague from the NDP's speech. He said a few things: that the housing crisis is the Liberals' fault, at least since 2015; that the SDTC spending by the Liberal government is horrible and inexcusable; and that the NDP is horrified by the wasteful spending and scandalous corruption.

The member and his colleagues have voted time and again to keep the corrupt Liberal government in power. My question is really this: Will he, at least for himself, commit to standing by his words and at the very next opportunity vote non-confidence in the government so that at least he will stand up on his principles and try to bring down the government so we can have an election?

[Don Davies, NDP, Vancouver Kingsway, BC]

Mr. Speaker, it is interesting that every opposition member elected to this place, especially in a minority Parliament, has a decision to make. They have to decide whether they are going to use their time and effort to attack, to destroy and to obtain nothing, or use their seat, voice and effort, roll up their sleeves and try to obtain benefits for Canadians. That is what I did and what the NDP did, with 25 MPs, by the way.

With 25 MPs, we secured dental care for nine million Canadians. We secured diabetes medication potentially for six million Canadians and contraception for 10 million Canadians. If we add that together, we are talking about 24 million Canadians who are going to get access to health care they do not have today. We got anti-scab legislation passed. We pushed the government to get 10 days of paid sick leave. We used our efforts to get these real, tangible results for Canadians. Frankly, the programs are still being implemented.

There is one thing I have asked the Conservatives repeatedly in the House and they will not answer: Will they cancel the dental care program that seniors right now are using to get their teeth fixed? Will they cancel the pharmacare program that is going to bring relief to people with diabetes?

The Conservatives want an election. Why would the New Democrats hasten a potential election that would hasten the Conservatives' getting rid of programs that are helping millions of Canadians? That is not what I was sent here to do. I was sent here to build services and make families' lives better, not worse.

[Gabriel Ste-Marie, Bloc, Joliette, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I have never seen anything like this. Parliament has been dealing solely with the question of privilege for the past month and a half, as my colleague pointed out in his speech.

I was under the impression that the Conservatives wanted to trap the government by making Parliament dysfunctional. However, the fact that this has been dragging on for so long seems to suit the government. This tired government has been around for a very long time and is afraid of confidence votes. There are no such votes these days. We are no longer debating any legislation, but the government seems to have run out of ideas.

How does my colleague see the next few weeks unfolding? Will this situation go on until Christmas? If that is the case, will we be able to vote on the estimates that we are just beginning to examine in committee? Before the House is able to vote on them, there will have to be opposition days. If we do not vote on the estimates, does that mean the government will fall and the election will be called at Christmas?

[Don Davies, NDP, Vancouver Kingsway, BC]

Mr. Speaker, what a pleasure it is to work with my hon. colleague on the finance committee in a productive way. Tomorrow we are going to be voting on amendments to the upcoming budget. We will be taking all of the evidence and input that we heard from the stakeholders who came to the finance committee over the last two months and making suggestions to the government to make the Canadian economic climate better and to help the businesses we need to succeed.

To answer the member's question, it is really up to the Conservatives and the Liberals. The Conservatives have decided to grind the House to a halt for six weeks. In fact a Conservative MP publicly stated the other day that one of the side benefits is that the Conservatives have paralyzed the Liberals' attempt to bring any legislation forward. That is a real indictment of their true purpose, to make sure nothing happens. It is irresponsible, and the Liberals are irresponsible in not providing the documents that Parliament has a right to see.

As long as both main parties are putting their own partisan interests ahead of the interests of people, of Canadians, we are going to continue the logjam. It is a shame. The responsibility lies on them. They are going to have to answer to the Canadian people for wasting Parliament's time and not getting anything done for Canadians, when the new Democrats and I think the Bloc at least want to work together to get laws passed and get policies in place that will help Canadians.

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Parliamentary Secretary to the Leader of the Government in the House of Commons]

Mr. Speaker, the core of the issue is that the matter be referred to the procedure and House affairs committee. That is the vote that needs to take place and that would get rid of the issue.

The reason it would go to the procedure and House affairs committee is that a great amount of concern has been raised by the RCMP, the Auditor General of Canada and other legal experts, who are saying that it would be inappropriate for us to hand unredacted documents directly to the RCMP. That was not necessarily known at the time the original motion was passed. Some people have suggested that it could even potentially be an abuse of power. This brings us back to the original motion. Let us get PROC to make a decision so that we, collectively as a House, do not do something that would potentially be against the charter rights of individuals.

Does the member believe that the Liberal government should be listening to the Conservatives on the issue or listening to the RCMP, the Auditor General of Canada and other legal experts who are telling us not to give the information directly to the RCMP?

[Don Davies, NDP, Vancouver Kingsway, BC]

Mr. Speaker, it is a valid concern. I have read about the same concerns from police forces. It is unusual, in fact I think unprecedented, for Parliament to order documents to be delivered directly to a police force.

Having said that, I am not sure it is illegal and I am not even sure it is necessarily impossible to do. Our police forces and the RCMP are used to executing subpoenas. They are used to getting documents. They will work with the Crown to see what the documents can and cannot be used for, subject to constitutional and charter rights. The police are used to dealing with that all the time, so I am not necessarily as convinced as my hon. colleague is that it cannot be done. It should be explored.

The real question the Liberals have to answer is what they are doing about the SDTC waste of millions and millions of dollars. I have not seen any ministerial accountability for that yet. A minister of the Crown was finally removed from cabinet today, but that is totally separate from the matter at hand. I have not seen any ministerial responsibility answerable to the taxpayers for the egregious waste of millions of taxpayer dollars through the Sustainable Development Technology fund, and that is something I would like to hear from my hon. colleague.

[Michael Barrett, Conservative, Leeds—Grenville—Thousand Islands and Rideau Lakes, ON]

Mr. Speaker, it is a real pleasure to have the opportunity to rise in the House and to be recognized by the Chair. The circumstances, though, are unfortunate. We are talking about a $400-million scandal, over 186 conflicts of interest and a lawful order from the majority of democratically elected members of Parliament, passed in the House, ordering the NDP-Liberals to hand over to the RCMP the documents pertaining to the scandal.

What they would like to do is turn the documents and the matter over to a committee. I find that wholly insufficient, and that is what I have heard from Canadians when I have talked to them, when they have called me and written to me about the matter. They want to know, when a crime is committed in their community, for example if someone steals $100, $1,000, $10,000 or breaks into a home, whether they are supposed to call a committee or supposed to call the cops. The answer is, of course, to call the police.

It is $400 million dollars that is involved, and it is interesting to note that this is what has been detected thus far, because the Auditor General reviewed only a sample in the SDTC matter. The actual malfeasance, misappropriation, theft and embezzlement that has gone on would be much, much higher than $400 million. That is exactly what the police would find out, and that is exactly why the Liberals are refusing a lawful order of Parliament to hand the documents over.

Every day, there is a new scandal with the Liberals. Today we started the day talking about the Liberal member from Edmonton who had shady business dealings, his company being sued for fraud for hundreds of thousands of dollars; his company being investigated by the Edmonton Police Service for fraud; and he and his business partner fraudulently applying for government contracts designated for indigenous-owned businesses.

The former minister said he never claimed to be indigenous except when he was applying for the contracts, disenfranchising actual indigenous-owned businesses. He now says he got his previous claims about his heritage wrong. The Liberal former minister said he was not directing his company from the cabinet table, but now we know he was and that what he said was not true.

He said his company was not applying for any government contracts while he was a minister, but we know it did in fact apply for a contract with Elections Canada, and it was awarded that contract for tens of thousands of dollars. Why would a government department award a contract to someone who sits around the table and decides on the funding and fate of its organization? I wonder why, if it did not advantage the Liberal former minister and disadvantage every other small and medium-sized business.

The business he had, by the way, was a pandemic profiteering business, taking advantage of people who were scared during a time of scarcity and great concerns about their health. Today we learned that the Liberal member from Edmonton is not in cabinet anymore. He is stepping away from cabinet to spend time with the other Randys.

It is not because the Liberal Prime Minister recognized that any one of the incidents, including having someone fraudulently claim to be indigenous, having someone have a business that is being investigated by the police for fraud, or having a minister who is directing a company from the cabinet table, would be enough to get them fired from a job in the private sector. Any one of those things would be enough to get them fired from any self-respecting government that was determined to serve Canadians and not just serve themselves and Liberal insiders. No, none of that was enough. However, I will note that Canada's first indigenous attorney general was fired for speaking out against the Prime Minister and his interference in the criminal prosecution of SNC-Lavalin. He kicked her out of caucus.

I wonder how many more days the former minister has in the Liberal caucus. The answer should be zero because his behaviour has been reprehensible. It is unbecoming not just of a minister of the Crown but of any parliamentarian. However, the Liberals stood up day after day and defended the indefensible. Some of them will stand up today and ask me questions after this speech. They defended the Liberal minister because it is not about helping Canadians when it comes to the Liberals. That is not their raison d’être.

What is the Liberals' primary objective? It is to help well-connected insiders, just as in this green slush fund. They are refusing to hand over the documents to the law clerk to go to the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. The Liberals have to protect the insiders. Every time we raised it and identified that there are some serious baddies working at that organization, the Liberals tried to sweep it under the rug, saying they were taking a look at that. No, they were not. The minister would quite excitedly proclaim that they had restored governance, but they did not. They did such a bad job at remedying the corruption, which they fostered and allowed to fester, that they just folded it into a government department, away from prying eyes and accountability to Canadians and parliamentarians. They did this so that their board chair, their other GIC appointees and their well-connected friends could line their pockets while Canadians lined up at food banks.

That is the thing about the Liberals. They are only ever sorry when they get caught. They said they had it in hand all along, but they are never willing to go far enough to do the right thing for Canadians.

Just yesterday, the Prime Minister said of the disgraced Liberal member for Edmonton Centre that he was happy for him to continue in cabinet. Knowing what he knew about all of his false claims and all the alleged criminality at his business, the Prime Minister was happy for him to stay, just as the Liberals are happy for everyone who is involved in SDTC to avoid the prying eyes of the police.

What are they so afraid of? I think they are terrified that once RCMP officers get a look at what went on, it is going to be bigger than the $400 million that was identified in the sample examined by the Auditor General's team, with more than 186 conflicts of interest. It is going to be worse. That is the culture that has been allowed, though, under the current NDP-Liberal government.

The Prime Minister himself has twice been found guilty of breaking the law while serving as Prime Minister. The now Public Safety Minister was found guilty of breaking the law, as was the trade minister. The former finance minister was found guilty of breaking the law while serving as finance minister. The current Speaker, former parliamentary secretary to the Liberal Prime Minister, was also found guilty of breaking the law. Why is this? It is because they used their positions to help their friends, well-connected insiders and themselves.

What did Canadians get with nine years of Liberals helping themselves and well-connected insiders? Our national debt has doubled. Home prices, rents and the needed down payment for a home have all doubled. Food bank use is now at a record high. When we talk about the struggles that Canadians have after nine years under the NDP-Liberals, child poverty is at its worst today. Now, 25% of Canadians, as reported by the Liberal government's own stats agency, are going to have to rely on food banks. That is interesting, because 25% is not the unemployment rate. This means that we have millions of Canadians who are working but have to go to the food bank.

In my conversations with operators and volunteers at food banks, I hear that they are having a real challenge in keeping up not just with the food-side demand but also with the volunteers needed to operate the food banks. The people who are using their services, who are relying on food banks to feed themselves and their families, now have to go to the food bank between shifts or between jobs. After they finish their first job for the day, they have to go to the food bank and then go to their next job. Therefore, people are working two and sometimes three jobs, but they still cannot afford nutritious food for their families. Man, are these guys ever helping themselves out, making sure that it is sunny ways for Liberal insiders and their well-connected friends but cloudy skies for everybody else.

It really makes me wonder why the Liberals do what they do. They say that they have altruistic goals, such as wanting to do something about the environment. Are they going to reduce the carbon footprint, let us say, for the head of government? No, of course they are not. The Liberal Prime Minister is a high-carbon hypocrite, the likes of which we have never seen. Meanwhile, he is raising the carbon tax on everyday Canadians, with food price inflation in this country outstripping that of our peer nations; he is taxing the farmers who grow the food, the truckers who move it, the grocers who sell it and the people who buy it. We have higher taxes just for the crime of heating our own home.

Can we imagine that, in our climate, the government would punish heating one's home? The Liberals say this is a behaviour that needs to be changed. We know that the Deputy Prime Minister, a Liberal from Toronto, thinks that people out in P.E.I. are going to be taking the subway instead of driving their pickup truck. However, I have news for the Deputy Prime Minister. Whether it is Victoria-by-the-Sea, Prince Edward Island; Victoria, British Columbia; or Athens, Ontario, in my community, no one is getting on the SkyTrain, the subway or a streetcar. They are getting in a minivan to take their kids to hockey, getting in the pickup truck to drive to the job site, or getting in their car to get some groceries or pick up their mom to take her to a doctor's appointment. They are just trying to live their lives.

Meanwhile, it is jet-setting and high-carbon hypocrisy with the Liberals. Of course, they are backed up on every bit of the pain they foist on Canadians by their accomplices in the NDP, who have abandoned working Canadians. While the Liberals impose binding arbitration on workers, we have seen the NDP saying that they are still going to support the Liberals. They have abandoned the very people they purported to represent in order to get elected.

Let us just take the tally. It is not about helping the environment; it is about helping themselves, jet-setting around the world all the while. It is not about helping Canadians, who just want to get by. They want to afford a good home in a safe neighbourhood, to be able to feed themselves and their families nutritious foods and to have a comfortable retirement someday. We have seen that with the economic vandalism perpetrated on Canadians with the inflationary deficits and monumental waste they have engaged in with the support of the NDP. They have abandoned workers, Canadian families and the Canadian middle class. The dream of people who came to this country long before I was born, as well as those who have aspired to come to it since I was born, was that they would be able to do those things I said: work hard, earn a good paycheque, buy a home in a safe neighbourhood, feed themselves and be able to retire. They believed their kids would do better than they did.

I have good news. The picture painted after nine years under the NDP-Liberals sounds pretty gloomy. However, life was not like this before the NDP-Liberal government, and it is not going to be like this after. That is why our common-sense Conservative plan will restore that promise for Canadians. I am so excited about it; I am very optimistic and hopeful for the future of this country, for my five young children, for young children across this country and for people who dream of coming to this land.

We know the Liberals have broken so many things, including housing and our immigration system, but we can fix it. All it will take is a carbon tax election to restore the fairness, promise and affordability that Canadians were born with and that people around the world have aspired to enjoy.

The Liberals do not want to do the right thing and turn over these documents so that they can be transmitted to the RCMP. They are terrified of what will be revealed. However, it does not mean we are going to stop our important work of holding them to account and making sure that, when a government oversees, presides over and permits, thereby promoting, the kind of fraud and corruption we have seen in this green slush fund, we are not going to abide it. The Liberals want to turn it over to a committee; we want to turn it over to the police, which is the rightful place for it to go.

Canadians cannot count on the Liberals. They have done a lot of carping about wanting to get on with other things in the House, but this is what we are here to do. I have a really simple solution for the Liberals: They can turn the documents over to the RCMP, and we can get on to those other things.

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Parliamentary Secretary to the Leader of the Government in the House of Commons]

Mr. Speaker, I do not believe Conservative members truly understand the consequences of this multi-million dollar game of a filibuster that is being orchestrated by the leader of the Conservative Party. It is going to cost Canadians greatly. There is complete disregard. There is an interesting story today. I think members opposite need to listen to what Conservatives are saying about their own leader, including members of Parliament. I quote: “He's the one who decides everything. His main adviser is himself…The people around him are only there to realize the leader's vision.”

I have been saying that for weeks now, that the leader of the Conservative Party and this whole multi-million dollar game are all about his personal self-interest.

When will Conservative members of Parliament stand up and speak their own minds as opposed to the mind of the leader of the Conservative Party and realize that what they are doing is borderline contempt of Parliament?

[Michael Barrett, Conservative, Leeds—Grenville—Thousand Islands and Rideau Lakes, ON]

Madam Speaker, for a guy whose government presided over more than $400 million being pilfered from Canadian taxpayers, he seems pretty incensed about things unrelated to the subject matter that we have talked about. I will say a couple of things.

First of all, he did not quote any member of Parliament so I am not sure what kind of fantasy fiction he is spinning.

I scrummed with the media today. As a matter of fact, on this very scandal, as far as where it came from, this was initiated by common-sense Conservatives at the Standing Committee on Access to Information, Privacy and Ethics. Guess what? I sit on that committee. The reason it is here today, I am so delighted to tell the parliamentary secretary, is that I had great help, partnership and collaboration with my Conservative colleagues in bringing this forward.

The second thing: on the cost of dealing with this in the House, the cost of not dealing with it is incredibly dangerous because Canadians cannot afford more of this scandal and fraud to be perpetrated without it being stopped. It ends here. This is the red line. We are not going to let them cross it.

[Julie Vignola, Bloc, Beauport—Limoilou, QC]

Mr. Speaker, we have been debating this issue for a few weeks now. This is not the first time we have had to tighten the screws to obtain unredacted documents. It also happened at the Standing Committee on Government Operations and Estimates, which our committee chair refers to as “the mighty OGGO”.

I believe my colleague has more experience in this Parliament than I do. My question is this. If there were an election tomorrow and the Conservative party won, would he have access to the unredacted documents? If so, would he show them to the rest of Parliament?

[Michael Barrett, Conservative, Leeds—Grenville—Thousand Islands and Rideau Lakes, ON]

Mr. Speaker, it is a great question from my hon. colleague. We have said that common-sense Conservatives, when in government, will restore accountability, just like we have said on matters of national security. Any elected parliamentarian who has been knowingly participating with a foreign state in surreptitious activity will be named. We will name them. We will not engage in the games like the Prime Minister.

On this matter, a matter that is so serious and that deals with hundreds of thousands of taxpayer dollars and speaks to a much deeper rot and corruption in the Liberal government, of course, the documents will be transmitted, unredacted, to the Royal Canadian Mounted Police through the parliamentary law clerk. Why? It is because that is what the House ordered to have been done and that is exactly what Conservatives will do. Why? It is because it is the right thing to do.

[Michael Chong, Conservative, Wellington—Halton Hills, ON]

Mr. Speaker, there is an easy way for the government to end the filibuster in the House. In fact, there is only one way to end the filibuster and that is for the government to hand over the documents. I quote yesterday's Globe and Mail editorial entitled “A Parliament that is dead on the inside.”

It reads: “There are a few ways this could end. But there is only one right way, and that is for the Liberal government to respect the will of the House and hand over the documents. Anything else would be a disgraceful blow to Parliament's ability to hold governments to account.”

Further, it says, “It's no way to run a country. Yes, there are other means to end the filibuster, and maybe at one point an opposition party will break out the defibrillator. But the Conservatives are not the bad guys in this scenario. Only the Liberal government, with its refusal to respect the will of the House, is responsible for Parliament's paralysis.”

Will the member comment on that?

[Michael Barrett, Conservative, Leeds—Grenville—Thousand Islands and Rideau Lakes, ON]

Mr. Speaker, we have heard from the Liberals before about what they think about objective reporting. The Liberal Prime Minister famously said of the scandal involving himself when he interfered in the criminal prosecution of SNC-Lavalin that the story in the Globe was false. Now we know what the Prime Minister said in that case was dishonest.

However, the question from my hon. colleague from Wellington—Halton Hills was an excellent one, because this could end today. The government simply needs to hand over the documents unredacted. The Prime Minister, his party and his Liberal MPs who are abiding by this paralysis of Parliament are the ones who are able to end this in an instant. They simply need to stand up and tell the Prime Minister to end the cover-up and turn over the documents. It is really simple to understand why they would do that. It is simple to understand why they would not, because they are terrified about what is going to be found out when the documents are turned over.

It is incredible the damage that this does to our democratic institutions when the Prime Minister of Canada is refusing lawful orders of the House of Commons for document production. It can set a very dangerous precedent. Frankly, he could just simply do the right thing, turn the documents over today and end this.

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Winnipeg North, MB]

Mr. Speaker, let me provide a quote from an article written by Steven Chaplin. Steven Chaplin is the former senior legal counsel in the Office of the Law Clerk and Parliamentary Counsel. He is a real expert. Here is what he had to say about this multi-million dollar game of the Conservative leader a couple of weeks ago:

It is time for the House of Commons to admit it was wrong, and to move on. There has now been three weeks of debate on a questionable matter of privilege based on the misuse of the House’ power to order producing documents.

He goes on:

It is time for the House to admit its overreach before the matter inevitably finds it way to the courts which do have the ability to determine and limit the House’s powers, often beyond what the House may like.

That was a quote from a newspaper article. I would encourage the members opposite to read it all. It was an expert who wrote that, but do not be confused by experts.

What words of wisdom does the member have to say about these particular quotes from an article by an expert?

[Michael Barrett, Conservative, Leeds—Grenville—Thousand Islands and Rideau Lakes, ON]

Mr. Speaker, just like the parliamentary secretary, the individual he quotes is wrong. That has been affirmed by the parliamentary law clerk. The law clerk for the House of Commons has testified that the House has the absolute unfettered power to order the production of these documents.

[An hon. member]

Oh, oh!

[Frank Caputo, Conservative, Kamloops—Thompson—Cariboo, BC]

Madam Speaker, on a point of order, the member for Winnipeg North just called my hon colleague a name. He should apologize. Not only that, it was completely inaccurate.

[The Assistant Deputy Speaker (Mrs. Alexandra Mendès), Alexandra Mendes]

The hon. parliamentary secretary.

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Winnipeg North, MB]

Madam Speaker, absolutely, I withdraw it.

[Michael Barrett, Conservative, Leeds—Grenville—Thousand Islands and Rideau Lakes, ON]

Madam Speaker, it is quite clear that the Liberals have run out of arguments. They have been demonstrated to be wrong. What they are doing is not consistent with exactly what the law clerk for the House of Commons has said.

Since the member is not able to engage in a debate worthy of this place, I have nothing further to add.